just another hack » 3D

Programming with Alice

Oliver — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 17:44:52 +0000

Speaking of 3D and learning. A few days ago I discoverd Alice, a 3D programming environment. Basically it’s a tool that let’s you create/program animations and simple games via an easy GUI, without having to worry about syntax and typing errors. Meaning the student/learner can concentrate on learning the basics of programing or tell a story, rather than search for a missing semicolon. According to some numbers the site casts around, it is improving the learning curve extremely. Definitely worth looking at for anyone from a hobby programmer to a CS major.

I’d love to hear if anyone already used it and can share their thoughts. I already gave the link to our CS department and am considering to let our trainees work with it.

Big Buck Bunny

Oliver — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 17:25:19 +0000

Watched Big Buck Bunny this weekend, the recently finished Project Peach movie by the Blender Institute. Of course, made with Blender. (Not to be mixed up with the Total Blender (weak pun intended).) I really enjoyed it, very fun to watch. And of course also great from the visual aspect. Go watch it, you won’t regret it! Or even better, buy the DVD.

And in case you don’t already know it, you might also want to check out the first open movie the institute made. It’s called Elephants Dream (Project Orange) and the story is… well, not your average kind of story. More like the ending of 2001: A Space Odyssey, even though much more enjoyable thanks to the eye candy.

Coming up from the institute is Project Apricot. Not a movie this time, but a game based on BBB, in collaboration with the Crystal Space Game Engine.

These projects are all great. They not only show nice results, but also lead to huge improvements of the open source software and show the work process/pipeline to anyone who is interested in the topic. Anyone working with 3D, movies, games and open source should pay attention to the projects, regardless if you use the software or not. One can learn very much from there.

Projects

Oliver — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 00:32:16 +0000

It’s been months, since I’ve been working on some kind of private project. So, since it’s a new year I finally want to start one. I have several ideas.

Building a Home-Theater-PC (HTPC)
This is a combination of two ideas. First I wanted to hook up my television set to my computer, so I could put some videos, photo shows and stuff onto my TV. Very nice if you have guest and don’t want them all to swarm behind the computer. The second idea was to get a hi-fi system. I can only listen to music when my computer is running. Which is okay, as long as I don’t try to do something that puts some heavy load on the machine. But as soon as I play a game or render some image, it’s over. So now the idea is to set up a HTPC. This also allows me to run a file server, record from TV and do a bazillion other things. I also plan on connecting a wii-mote for some nice IR cam experiments. Of course it’ll run linux. Finding silent, electricity saving and linux-and-htpc-software compatible hardware will be the hardest part. And sparing a few hundred bucks, when I also need to get a car.
lonks
This is actually an old project. Two years ago I wrote a link manager, so I can keep my bookmarks online and don’t need to carry around a file for this or use a social bookmarking service (which wasn’t my idea of having my private links online). I stopped after it got usable for me. The original idea was an online service, but since laws are complicate, I didn’t pursue that idea any longer. A few weeks ago I got hooked up again. I will recode lonks and add lots of features. Not sure yet, if I will start a community, but if all goes well, there’ll be an open source edition for personal use on their own server.
3D
Oh, I’ve been slacking on this stuff way too long. I’ve got dozens of ideas, but I really got to get more familiar with Blender again. Hopefully I can work on this soon enough. More when the time comes.
Universal Aerial Video Plattform (UAVP)
There’s an open source project to build a quadcopter where you can attach a camera to. This is really a nice combination of tasks. I get to build something, can mess around in the code (unlike other interesting projects these days (Google Android, WowWee robotics, etc) it’s not written in Java), get something to play around with (boys need toys) and can finally do something photography related. Well, this project is months away for me due the other stuff, but hey, maybe in summer.

Well, so much for a quick roundup of the major productive stuff I’m planning to spend time on. More details when there’s progress and/or something to write.